In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Parallax, Transit, Transmotion:Reading Race in the Allotment Photographs of E. Jane Gay
  • Nicole Tonkovich (bio)

In April 1890, amid mounting anti-Indian hysteria that culminated in the massacre at Wounded Knee, Carlisle Indian School’s newspaper the Red Man printed a feature article titled “A Brave Woman Allotting Lands to Indians in Idaho.” Playing on the racialized tension inherent in juxtaposing the words “brave woman” and “Indians,” this headline introduced the second in a series of epistolary accounts of the “Novel and Interesting Experiences” of Alice C. Fletcher, the Special Indian Agent in charge of allotting lands to the Nez Perces (Gay, “Brave” 2). Written by the agent’s photographer-companion, E. Jane Gay, these letters, “rich and racy view[s] of a trying situation,” allowed Fletcher’s colleagues in the Indian reform movement, many of whom read the Red Man, to follow the progress of allotment from a distance (Gay, “Woman” 5).1

Fletcher and Gay also wrote hundreds of personal letters from Idaho during the summers of 1889 through 1892, at times including copies of Gay’s black-and-white photographs.2 These images have made Fletcher’s work in the field visible to those who remained at a distance from her in space and time, both in her own lifetime and today, for they continue to attract the attention of historians and other scholars interested in the US West. Gay’s allotment photographs are quite unlike those made by other early photographers of this region, for allotment, unlike the military occupation of the Great Plains and unlike the survey expeditions of Clarence King, Ferdinand Hayden, John Wesley Powell, and George Wheeler, was a uniquely bureaucratic process. Its photographic record is not distinguished by images of soldiers bravely facing armed enemies or of intrepid explorers perched on precipitous cliffs. In fact, envisioning Fletcher as alone or endangered by physical violence is an illusion Gay’s photographs dispel.

A photograph such as “Camp Sunday” (1890) (see Figure 1) emblematizes the domesticating agendas of allotment. In this image, Fletcher is neither alone nor endangered. Wherever she went, she was armed with the technologies of colonization, abundantly apparent in the homely and largely unremarkable contextual [End Page 66] information visible here. In “Camp Sunday” Fletcher sits opposite her surveyor, Edson Briggs, who supervised the work of a group of assistants, one of whom is partially visible at the left. Many of these workers were young Native men, now manual laborers rather than warriors. After spending long days in the field pulling the surveyor’s measuring chain across rough terrain, they also cared for the horses, served as couriers, chopped wood, hauled water, and performed other labors associated with rough camping. Fletcher’s Nez Perce translator and guide, James Stuart, sits on the ground with his hat on one knee and a large paper draped over the other. Fletcher, Briggs, and Stuart seem so unaware of the camera that captures their images one might forget this group included Gay, who clerked, cooked, and managed the details of Fletcher’s personal life in print and image.


Click for larger view
View full resolution
Figure 1.

E. Jane Gay, “Camp Sunday” (Aug. 1890), photograph. Photograph 63-221-11. JGPC.

In “Camp Sunday” a web of visual signifiers attests to the allotting agent’s authority. In this dusty clearing Fletcher, whom Gay ironically dubbed “Her Majesty” to their friends (Choup-nit-ki 14), is enthroned on a repurposed wagon seat; the Native workers sit on the bare ground. Her makeshift desk is shaded by an umbrella lashed to the tripod that usually served as the base of the surveyor’s transit. The umbrella is clearly hers, as is the washboard. Both of these details emphasize her refined habits, as do her dark, long-sleeved, high-necked dress and her bow-trimmed bonnet. Decidedly incongruous to the surroundings, her attire proclaims her administrative authority as she confers with Briggs over the bureaucratic details of the allotments she had come to this site to verify. [End Page 67]

Fletcher, the center of gravity in this image, shares the photographic frame not only with her staff but also with the tools of allotment: the documents on the...

pdf

Share